It was an outstanding idea to put these two books together into a single volume, one being the first true Gothic novel and the other being a critical response to it, the result being a lifelong feud between the authors.

Reeve’s story is intended as a response to Walpole’s, a critical alternative meant to tell something of the same story without using supernatural elements, which Reeve effectively viewed as cheating. Oh Clara, if you could only see what’s popular now.

I’ve read both novels before, but to read them in succession and together like this allows for greater comparison, and is also, from a marketing perspective, a fun and clever way to repackage and sell two books that a lot of readers already own.

As for the aforementioned comparison, it’s Walpole who comes out on top. For one, he wrote the story first, and Reeve uses his concept to interpret as she sees fit. And the supernatural element, so sneered are by Reeve, is welcome in the Gothic tradition and works well for the story.

Interestingly, Reeve might have done better to simply share her story without the comparison in the first place. It’s a good book in its own right and could stand on its own, and only suffers in comparison, not to mention the sneering criticism that accompanied it was offputting in nature.

Welcome Additions…
Another delightfully produced and welcome addition from Gothic Classics (Haunted Library Horror Classics - The Horror Writers Association). This one features The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve and with a fun, unique and readable introduction.

"Manfred, the lord of the castle of Otranto, has long lived in dread of an ancient prophecy: it's foretold that when his family line ends, the true owner of the castle will appear and claim it. In a desperate bid to keep the castle, Manfred plans to coerce a young woman named Isabella into marrying him.

Isabella refuses to yield to Manfred's reprehensible plan. But once she escapes into the depths of the castle, it becomes clear that Manfred isn't the only threat. As Isabelle loses herself in the seemingly endless hallways below, voices reverberate from the walls and specters wander through the dungeons. Otranto appears to be alive, and it's seeking revenge for the sins of the past."

I LOVE when the Gothic Classics (capitals SO needed) get lovely new reissues.

When I was young (some decades ago), I collected eighteenth-century fiction. Two of the books that have sat of my bookshelves for the last 30-40 years were Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1778). Poisoned Pen Press’s new edition of both books in one volume has finally nudged me to re-read the books. If you’re going to read these books too, please take note of two things…

Firstly, these are very important books in the development of literature. If you have any aspiration to understand how the English-language novel developed from its genesis under Defoe and Richardson in the first half of the eighteenth century, through its early adulthood in the age of Dickens, Trollope and George Eliot in the 1800s to its current grown-up status with Hemingway, Bradbury and Bellow, you should study Otranto and the Baron. The Old English Baron has been described as one of the most successful and influential works of its generation.

The second, equally important, point is that they were written 250 years ago and we shouldn’t expect them to be as pacy as John Grisham or as light as Bridgerton. They were written for an eighteenth-century reader, who would read more slowly and carefully than we tend to do. The Castle of Otranto was published less than 50 years after Defoe’s books that we would recognise as early fiction; and about 25 years after Richardson’s Pamela, the first modern novel with a division into chapters. Writers were still experimenting – Laurence Sterne was in the midst of writing Tristram Shandy with its full page of solid black ink when a character dies and the large squiggle that represents Uncle Toby’s stick-shaking.

Otranto tells the tale of a villainous usurper and his attempts to retain his hold over a kingdom and to possess a young virgin. There’s a giant helmet; supernatural happenings; and lots of other OTT unbelievable events. The dialogue is painful; the narrative is tedious; and the coincidences could never really happen. However, without Otranto, there would have been no Frankenstein; no Hammer horror movies; and no Stephen King.

Clara Reeve’s introduction to The Old English Baron explains how she felt Walpole’s Otranto was too OTT and that readers laughed at clumsy plot devices. (Remember, this is only 13 years after Otranto was first published.) Reeve dialled down the horror but the good characters are still 100% goody-goodies, prone to weep with emotion such as gratitude. We find it difficult to relate to them because we expect fictional characters to behave more like real ones, with flaws as well as admirable traits. Emma, whom our hero admires and loves, is pretty much just a cipher and whose only purpose is to allow a tidy ending to the plot. The Baron is definitely easier than Otranto for a modern reader but parts will still progress so sloooooowly that you’ll want to scream. There are a few (VERY few) moments of sly humour, such as Edmund’s foster-mother giving “[…] vent to her joy, by relating to the servants and neighbours every circumstance of Edmund’s birth, infancy and childhood.” Does that sound like any modern Jewish mothers you may know?

I recommend the books to anyone prepared to approach them with the excited mindset of a reader of 250 years ago to whom novels (any novel) is a new experience. If you don’t have the patience to do that and you want an easy read, stick with the twenty-first century.

I love the idea of Classics collections, but, unfortunately, these just weren't my favourite novels.

3 Stars
"The Castle of Otranto" definitely isn't one of my favorite classics. The story was over the top and somewhat non-sensical at times.

2 Stars
"The Old English Baron" started out fine and then it just dragged on forever. If the author had cut all the bowing and hugging that went on (especially) in the second part of the story, it would have only been half as long. I know the author was going for an old-timey feel but it just ended up boring.

This one is so extremely hard to follow. I would love to see these stories adapted to more modern writing, so that they can be more easily read and understood. The writing is very dated and almost like an old Shirley Jackson novel, but a lot harder to keep up with.

I received this book for free for an honest review from netgalley #netgalley

Great read on fall nights. Spooky good fun.

In the bonkers Castle of Otranto, the lord of the manner is trying to marry his poorly son off to get an heir to the family as soon as possible, only for him to die in ridiculous fashion on the morning of the marriage. So what does the bloke do? Demand he get his own marriage nullified to start tupping his intended daughter-in-law. She flees, of course, leaving a kindly lad behind who stood up for her at the death scene and helped her escape. Surely he's not going to fall in love with the princess of the house?

As wonderful as it might have seemed at the time, and as influential as it must have been since, read in 2021 it is clear it is a bludgeoning pile of hokum, with about as much subtlety as the actual cause of death. So we turn to the lesser-known of the two novels here, one which – as it was produced in riposte to Otranto – has often been published with it in the same two covers. And it's even worse – the plummiest of atrophied manners and mannerisms flood every sentence, the story takes a quarter of its running time to introduce anything even slightly Gothic, and when you see where the book is going it's a stronger man than I to deem it worthwhile concluding.

Eventually you do discover it's a (very dry) skeletons-in-the-closet kind of story, where the hero discovers that he has more claim to the mansion and named family he lives with than his foster father's own disagreeable children who have turned against him. He's half Hamlet, struggling to prove what befell people before he was cognizant of the destiny once in store for him, and half Cinderella, having to cope with wicked siblings (and ghosts) while being all pious and smiley.

Kudos to the book for giving us both these stories, but neither proved at all finishable for me – and word has it the Baron gets even worse the closer to the end it gets. The mind reels from such horrors.

This novel contained two examples of Gothic Literature from the end of the 18th century. Both stories were fine in their own right, and I did enjoy reading the foreword to the two novels, but I failed to understand what exactly this novel was trying to achieve by putting the two stories together. The reader is never given a specific reason why these two stories were chosen, and there is not a lot of extra information in order to make this version of these stories any more worthwhile than the originals. Overall, it was a fine read, but not entirely necessary in my opinion.

There isn't much to say about this book, to be honest. It contains two examples of Gothic literature from the end of 18th century. Both are interesting, but most probably already read by all horror fans. So, maybe the extra stuff will be worth it? Well, there is a short introduction by Robert McCammon which is pretty fun to read. There are also brief biographies of the two authors, a set of questions students can discuss in class, and a small selection of other novels that might be of interest for the readers. None of them is big enough to warrant any interest from most readers, though. Finally, the book is missing any type of preface or introduction that positions the two novels within the larger context of Gothic literature, British culture or history.

A nice "double bill" of two classic Gothic stories but nothing more than that.